New rules for treating detained immigrants

November 24, 2007|By Teresa Watanabe, Tribune Newspapers

Washington — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has adopted federal guidelines aimed at softening treatment of illegal immigrants who are arrested in work site raids and are either pregnant, nursing mothers or sole caregivers to minor children or seriously ill relatives.

The federal guidelines, publicly released last week, say that agents should develop a comprehensive plan to identify such people in raids targeting more than 150 people and work with social service agencies to assess their humanitarian needs in deciding whether to detain them while processing their deportation cases.

The agency developed the guidelines with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and plans to issue the guidelines to all enforcement offices, said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice. "ICE is committed to enforcing the law, but we're also committed to addressing humanitarian concerns," Kice said.

She added that the agency has long taken those concerns into account, but that the guidelines promulgated with Kennedy's office formalized the procedures for doing so.

The guidelines come amid a sharp increase in the number of workplace raids and other enforcement actions, leading to growing concerns about their impact on children. In recent years, worksite administrative arrests of illegal immigrants have increased sevenfold, from about 500 in 2002 to about 3,600 in 2006, according to ICE.